CNN is reporting that Sandor Ferenci, 28, of Oxfordshire, England, has been jailed for 12 weeks for engaging in reckless, high speed stunts which he posted on YouTube. The case got started when residents reported his license plate for allegedly speeding. When the police came to investigate, Ferenci asked if they had seen his YouTube Videos. WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THIS!!?? That is like being pulled over, then asking the officer if he would like to smell the marijuana in your trunk. The officers investigated further, found the videos, and charged Ferenci using his own videos, which he pointed them to, against him.

What isn’t mentioned is exactly what details were apparent in the videos, as there is nothing inherently illegal about driving fast and doing stunts on a motorcycle. It is done all the time on closed courses to make all of those pretty action scenes we all love to go see in the movies. What is illegal is doing it on a public road without permission. However, the police, in the US at least, cannot simply charge you for reckless driving based on a video of you doing stunts. They need to establish 1) that it is actually you and 2) that it was done in their jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is important as the Boston Police cannot charge you for driving recklessly in Detroit. So either the videos clearly showed Ferenci in some capacity (his license plate was readable, or there was some unique aspect of his bike or outfit that was identifiable) AND were on clearly identifiable public roads within the jurisdiction, or he simply admitted to both. Given that Ferenci alerted the police to this existence of the videos in the first place, I’m guessing it was the latter.

Disclaimer: The Pansy Patrol does not endorse dangerous, reckless, and/or illegal driving on any public way. The Pansy Patrol also recommends NOT digging any hole you may find yourself in deeper, particularly with the help of a backhoe like Mr. Ferenci.

Fairly soon, you’re going to start seeing those same tired old articles about how to make sure your car “makes it” through the winter: Change your wiper blades. Use a gasoline additive. Put a shovel and blankets in your trunk (evidently so you don’t freeze when your car breaks down even after following the tips that are supposed to prevent breakdowns). These articles, which for the most part simply suggest that you perform the basic maintenance that any car requires (like replacing your wiper blades when they get old), are worthless. Here is what you actually need to do if you want your car to serve you well throughout a snowy winter.

Buy snow tires:
That’s really about it. You can keep reading the rest of my tips and suggestions if you want, but this is about 90% of the game. Snow tires make the biggest difference in your car’s ability to manage snowy or icy conditions. Regardless of what you drive—a truck, a FWD sedan, a RWD sports car, something AWD—the proper tire has the greatest effect on your vehicle’s limits. A top-level snow tire like a Blizzak WS-60 gives your car enough grip that you can drive fairly normally in all but the worst snow and ice. In my Protégé, for example, I find that I can brake about as hard in the snow with WS-60s as I do in normal dry driving. I have enough grip that I need to force myself to brake earlier than is reasonable so that the driver behind me, who probably doesn’t have snow tires, doesn’t hit me.

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Track season is winding down. The last week of October, I’m going to Watkins Glen for 2 days and to Lime Rock for 1. Then the season ends, and with it ends the Protégé’s tenure as my primary track car. It’s given me 2 relatively trouble-free years. But it’s old, it’s tired, and it’s time for me to move on. Before I do, I thought I’d look back on my first track car, a 1994 Mazda Protégé.

The Protégé was never meant to be a track car. I bought it from a woman whose last name was Schmuck for a thousand bucks. It had 143,000 miles on it when I got it. It has 263,000 now. Even for a beater, it was slow in a straight line, and my friends deemed it the most innocuous car ever.

Even now, in “track” form, it’s pretty inept. It has the 125hp DOHC engine and rear disc brakes out of a ’93 Protégé LX instead of the original 102hp SOHC engine and rear drums. It has the mildest possible shock/spring upgrade, large sway bars, a full exhaust, racing brake pads, and Spec Miata-legal wheels and tires.

Misfortune and joblessness brought the Protégé to the track for the first time. In May of 2007, I took my VR-4 to Watkins Glen, where I proceeded to boil the rear brakes, destroy the tires, and bend 2 wheels (not from spinning, but from bombing through the bus stop and over curbing). Shortly after, I was laid off and in no position to resurrect the VR-4.

Enter the Protégé. For the first few track days it still had the rear drums—meaning that it had no rear brakes at all. I discovered this to be the case during the first track day after installing the rear discs, when I trail-braked into the bowl at NHMS with working rears and pitched the car off the track.

By that time, the Protégé had already established itself as a sort of track-day oddity. It was by far the “slowest” and the worst car at every event. In a sea of Lotuses, Porsches, BMWs, and Miatas—all blending together—the Protégé was as blatant on the track as it was innocuous off of it. And it was fast, much faster than I expected and much faster than other people could believe.

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ARS Technica has an interesting article looking at the effects of a cars being able to drive themselves (and you) in the future. The first page of the article goes into all of the benefits of having cars do the driving instead of humans: cars don’t fatigue, get drunk, get distracted, or require experience to become better at driving. All of which, the argument goes, will lead to less accidents and thus everyone will be much safer.

While this argument seems valid on its face, I am just too much of a skeptic to accept that having cars do the driving is in anyone’s best interest in the foreseeable future. The problem with technology and computer programs (and it would be a computer program piloting you around) is that they are only as good as the people who created or programmed them, and all programs and systems eventually crash. Just look at your personal computer - when was the last time it crash or froze? With your computer, the worst that happens is that you lose some data. If your car’s brain crashes when you expect it to be driving, then YOU crash too, possibly getting injured or worse. And what happens if you encounter something that the program doesn’t recognize or know how to handle? Experience is only good if it is actually programmed into the program. If it is not there, the program cannot think, and thus has no judgment at all about how to handle the situation.

While an interesting concept, I don’t see us relenquishing control of our cars to computers anytime soon.

Recently I picked up a copy of Popular Science at the airport to kill boredom on a cross-country flight. I’m accustomed to getting a skim what’s new in science and technology, nifty how-tos for hacking home gadgets, and yes, even automotive news.

What I’m not used to seeing are full-page ads of preposterous scams that any technophile can spot a mile away. This one in particular claims “over 100 miles per gallon, even with an SUV”. The paragraph of blatantly false pseudo-science that follows is at once outlandish and offensive. “The Science Behind The Solution“, the ad claims “…is to install a Hydro-Assist Fuel Cell Kit. Using electricity from your battery, it turns water into pure gas that is mixed with your gasoline in the combustion chamber.” — seriously folks, I can’t make this stuff up.

What they are describing (electrolysis of water) is not only inefficient, but it is net-energy-negative, meaning it takes more energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen than burning them can ever make back. Add to this the fact that the alternator which charges the battery and the battery itself are both inefficient, this system must inherently be consuming more energy than it can produce!

But wait, there’s more! They also claim to use “a Covalizer (to break down the covalent bonds of the fuel)“. Sounds like another fuel line magnet to me. (by the way, that link goes to Popular Science’s sister publication Popular Mechanics, in which they disprove automotive fuel improvement scams) There’s also brief general mention of “ionization” in the ad too; if ever there was a general rule for regarding consumer gadgets, it’s ‘if they use the word “ionization”, don’t buy it’.

Had enough? That’s not all. Apparently, “the second step is to install a customized Pre-Ignition Catalytic Converter (PICC) that will actually turn your fuel into plasma and burn it so clean that there is no pollution“. With the former owners of “male enhancement” companies being fined 500 million dollars on charges of fraud, I’m shocked there are still con artists out there dumb enough to peddle this crap.

How can anyone expect a (presumably educated) reader of a science magazine to believe that a “relatively inexpensive modification” will more than quadruple fuel economy and burn with “no pollution”? If it were possible, wouldn’t every automaker already be doing it? How can any technology publication with integrity allow supermarket-tabloid science onto its advertising pages? Shame on you, Popular Science.

As the global financial markets come crashing down all around us, something else is falling with them. The price of a barrel of oil just passed its lowest price in over a year. As I write this, the national average cost per gallon of regular unleaded is $3.35, down from a whopping $4.11 in mid-July 2008. According to CNN, experts are predicting $60/barrel oil in the coming year, which should make gasoline about $2/gal in 2009.

Maybe by next summer it will be time to bring your 600 horsepower turbo cars out of storage.

So apparently the original Ecto-1 from Ghostbuster’s is being sold on Ebay currently. The Ecto-1 was made from a 1959 Cadillac. The car was dismantled, but the seller says he was able to acquire all of the original parts to restore the Ecto-1 to its former gloy.

At 5000 pounds, 21 feet long, and 10 feet tall, I would imagine any inputs would need to be planned about 1/4 mile in advance…

I’ll be at Lime Rock Park today for another SCDA track day. I haven’t been to LRP since they resurfaced the track, so it should be interesting. Pictures and video will be up shortly after the event (provided the Protege behaves), and you can also follow along with me throughout the day on Twitter (@Clint47). If you don’t see me update for a while, either the Protege has failed or I’ve had a misfortune too complicated to express in 140 characters.

Here is the provisional schedule for F1’s 2009 season:

Mar. 29
Australian Grand Prix
Melbourne

Apr. 5
Malaysian Grand Prix
Sepang International Circuit

Apr. 19
Bahrain Grand Prix
Bahrain International Circuit
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As you’ll recall from my post back in May, a driver had a bit of an oopsie leaving after being issued a citation:

Well I recently found a video of what I believe to be the actual video of the car driving up onto the police cruiser! The view is from the dash cam of the officer’s cruiser.